Speaking of the Rockets' new website, it is a nice looking site. I still have to say though, the idea of bringing your website down for a month leading up to the start of the season is not the best marketing strategy anyone ever came up with. The entire preseason, if anyone wanted any info on the Rockets, they were just SOL as far as the official website was concerned. This is not the way to do redesigns. Leave the existing site up until the new one is ready, huh?
Bad luck for Pats overager Kaspars Saulietis. After beating out Marco Insam to earn a job on the team in a three-way battle for two import spots, Saulietis suffered a separated shoulder on his first shift of the team's season opener. As a result, he will be out for three months.
One game last night, the Hitmen beating the visiting Ice 5-1 in a battle of two teams going in opposite directions to start the season. The Hitmen are now 3-0 (tied with Tri-City for first overall now) while the Ice drop to 0-3. I don't know if there's some internal disciplinary thing going on, but if not, the decision by Ice coach Mark Hollick last night to scratch two overage defencemen and dress only five blueliners for the game is open to question. When you dress only two overagers despite having four available, and only five defencemen - including only two who played full seasons in the WHL last year - and then give a 16 year old goalie his first career start behind that d-corps, and proceed to lose 5-1, I'd say your decision-making is open to question. If the scratched O/A d-men - Chad Greenan and Paul Kurceba - were being disciplined for breach of team rules or something, that's a different story, but if it was just coaches decision.....
Speaking of coaches taking responsibility, to his credit rookie Rockets coach Ryan Huska accepted responsibility for his teams' loss to the Americans in the season opener on Saturday. Article on the game is here but in a nutshell, the Rockets were up 5-2 when Brandon McMillan was assessed a five-minute major penalty and also ejected. Huska chose not to put a player in the penalty box right away to serve McMillan's major; that's allowed and you can put a player in there to serve it at any stoppage prior to the penalty expiring. Except that they never did, and so when the penalty expired there was nobody allowed to come out on the ice. So they sent a player off the bench, which is another no-no. Making it worse, the Americans scored before the next whistle, and the Rockets were then dinged for too many men for having sent the player off the bench when they weren't allowed to. It gets worse - the Americans scored on that powerplay too, so a seemingly safe 5-2 lead is now 5-4 because of Huska's two mistakes. The Americans eventually tied the game and won it in overtime, 6-5. It is safe to say that there have been more successful and rewarding coaching debuts in the WHL. On the bright side, things can only get better for Huska from here on.
Keep an eye on October 20 in Vancouver on your calendar: that's the next time the Giants face the Silvertips. Giants coach Don Hay was steamed after their game on Saturday ended in a series of fights in which Hay felt the Tips were targetting Giants rookies. Both teams were fined for their actions and Hay sounds contrite now, but it'll be interesting to note the whereabouts of Garet Hunt, Mike Wuchterl and Chris Cloud when the starting lineups are announced on the 20th.
Only one game on the sched for tonight as well and it's another battle of opposites as the 2-0 Edmonton Oil Kings make the 90 minute hop down the QE2 to Red Deer to play the 0-2 Rebels. Red Deer is still without Brandon Sutter, who remains in North Carolina with the NHL's Hurricanes. In Edmonton, meanwhile, goalie Alex Archibald is enjoying this start to the season much more than he did the start last year in Chilliwack.
Last week I mentioned the Hitmen contest to design Martin Jones' goalie mask; well, here's another contest for a goalie mask on an even bigger stage. Details are yet to be released, but if it's like past years then once again Hockey Canada will take submissions from children across the country for the design of a goalie mask to be worn by Team Canada's goaltenders at the World Juniors this year.
From the NHL stupid rules department (they never run out of material), why is the Islanders' Chris Simon allowed to play preseason games despite still serving a 25 game suspension from last season that will carry over into this year? Especially preseason games against the Rangers? And when Ryan Hollweg is dressed for the Rangers? Yes, this all happened last night, and with predictable results. That's Simon running Hollweg into the boards from behind, and if you ignore the rest of the fracas that erupts and just watch those two, you'll see Simon tangle with Hollweg after Hollweg gets up, and get some more revenge for last year's incident. There's also a goalie fight between Al Montoya and Rick DiPietro. The point is though, why is Simon allowed to play at all? Shouldn't it go without saying that players with carryover suspensions can't play in preseason either? Simon's clubbing of Hollweg last year was a huge black eye for the league and yet the league seemingly can't be bothered to impose real punishments either.
Lastly, there's die-hard fans and then there's this: with the history-cursed Cubbies holding down first place in the NL Central and the playoffs approaching, a pair of big Cubs fans in Indiana - Paul and Teri Fields - have named their newborn son "Wrigley". Yes, Wrigley Fields. I guess it could be worse....they could have been Bears ("Soldier Fields"?) or Rockies ("Coors Fields"?) fans. Or Seattle Seahawks ("Meet our son, Qwest Fields").
2 comments:
Alan,
With the Luke Wiens suspension the club could only dress two overagers. That'll be the same for Friday night in Lethbridge.
JB
Thanks for the clarification on that, Jeff. So that explains why Hollick only dressed two overagers. Doesn't explain why he only dressed five defencemen though. He could have sat Bauer and dressed either Greenan or Kurceba?
And is this the end of the line for Luke Wiens? His suspension forces the team to play with only 2 O/As for two early divisional games. He wasn't going to make the team anyway but he gets into one game and does the one thing he probably shouldn't have done: take a really bad penalty.
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